The Deepest Roots

A chilly June day brought us an unexpected visit from farming guru Joel Salatin. Marilyn, co-owner of the CSA Abundantly Green, sent me an invitation to hear Salatin at the Day Road Farm on Bainbridge Island, just up the road from my house. It seemed to be only for farmers, but I signed up anyway. Maybe I know the secret handshake by now. Read More

Enjoyed your reflections, very much. I chuckled that you had the same puzzled reaction to the "womb hole" comment. I thought perhaps I had misheard, then played it over in my mind and decided it might be an "in joke." Cliff was put off by his preachery way even though he agrees with Salatin. <br><br>We are living his other comments. We are struggling to become a functioning diversified farm because we have a clay soil, bad worms in the soil, and we have to make our own good dirt. The Farmers Markets are still a novelty not a necessity, and for this I weep. I see pictures almost every day of the farmers markets in Taiwan where a friend shops. They are vibrant and full of people who want to buy the food for their meals.

As the winter season wanes, we miss the foods that are in such abundance in the late summer. We ate the last of our frozen green beans, but still have a few potatoes from Abundantly Green, and our homemade saur kraut. I made hamentashen dough with duck eggs for Purim. Pinto beans are boiling Read More

On January 1, we visited friends who live west of the Hood Canal Bridge. In their sunny bowl of a valley, vegetables were still growing under cold frames, and they sent us home with two week’s worth of salads and greens.

Three weeks later, several inches of snow covered western Washington, stranding us all Read More

I continued my questions by driving out to see my friends Marilyn Holt and Cliff Wind, who inherited a farm from Marilyn’s father. About four years ago Holt Ranch became a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture farm, which means that individual families pay at the beginning of each season to receive a share Read More

Sweet Life Bainbridge Island curls like a fist of rock around Eagle Harbor on the western edge of Puget Sound, thirty-five minutes from downtown Seattle by ferry. Over half the working population commutes to Seattle every day on a Jumbo Mark II, either the Tacoma or the Wenatchee. The ferries resemble floating airports, they are so large and stable, each capable of carrying 2,500 passengers and 200 vehicles at a time.I have joked that, if we were completely cut off from the mainland, Bainbridge Island, with its population of about 25,000, could live off of locally made white wine and goat cheese for quite awhile. Every April the farmer’s market reopens, and we have our choice of – goat cheese, honey, and a few vegetables. The truth is, our growing season is short, and there are just some things that won’t grow here in quantity. The soil is bad, and the local gardening guru, Ann Lovejoy, recommends buying good soil and dumping it directly on top, rather than attempting to work it into the rocky hardpan that dominates the terrain.As a result, most of our produce is still purchased through the locally owned Town & Country Market, and a Safeway store. Once, Bainbridge was famous for its strawberries, but a blight, along with the forced internment of Japanese American farmers during World War II, ended their production. By the fall, a greater variety is available, but as Americans, we are used to having seasonal products year-round: lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, avocadoes, citrus fruits, things that grow in limited quantities or not at all in our cool, wet climate. “There are no seasons in the American supermarket,” according to the movie, Food, Inc. (2008). Read More

Creative nonfiction, memoir, environmental sustainability.

Combining memoir, historical records, and a blueprint for sustainability, The Deepest Roots shows us how an island population can mature into responsible food stewards and reminds us that innovation, adaptation, diversity, and common sense will help us make wise decisions about our future. And along the way, we learn how food is intertwined with our present but offers a path to a better understanding of the future.